LOS ANGELES >> Wayne Scott reflected earlier this month on how long he has attended USC home football games at the Coliseum.

It’s been eight decades.

Scott, a 95-year-old retired school principal and an alum, traced his first game to 1937 when he was a high schooler from Huntington Beach. The Trojans were hosting Oregon that October.

“I watched guys that are old-timers now,” Scott said.

He pointed to USC’s most recent run of athletic directors: Lynn Swann, Pat Haden and Mike Garrett. Scott was there too in the 1960s and 1970s when Swann, Haden and Garrett put on pads for the Trojans.

For the past three decades, Scott’s vantage point has remained the same at the Coliseum. He sits along the south sideline in Section 10, about 50 rows up near the 10-yard line. He purchases six seats. His daughter, Susan, plus grandchildren and other family members and friends, often accompany him.

Scott, though, expects this fall will be their last season together.

When USC unveiled its planned renovations to the historic stadium earlier this month, the proposed changes included removing more than 16,000 seats. That means the reduced capacity, a drop from 93,607 to 77,500, is poised to relocate a majority of season-ticket holders as soon as the 2018 season. The project’s completion is scheduled for before the 2019 season.

Less means more

Scott and his family may not be moved out of Section 10, but as a result of the smaller capacity, two of their seats will be cut out. They will be capped at four season seats instead of their usual six, one reason for dismay.

That comes along with additional fees, including a now required one-time “restoration gift” of $100 per seat, donations mirroring personal seat licenses that will be used to help fund the $275 million cost for renovations. As a member of the Trojan Club, one of the school’s four primary support groups, Scott pays $1,000 in annual dues to purchase seats in the marked-off section.

Following the renovations, one-third of the seats will require the PSL-like fees to purchase season tickets, a price tag that ranges from $100-$6,000 per seat.

Scott said he planned to retain four tickets for his family, though fewer of them would attend. He added that he is worried how the new fees might impact others.

“It seems that inevitable that the stadium would cater toward the dollar, toward the money,” Scott said. “I think in the long run, loyalty and enthusiasm from the more common people will be diminished.”

USC athletic director Lynn Swann said in a blog post earlier this month on the school’s website that there were a “few folks fearful of change,” but that the rollout detailing the plan had been “well received.”

In more than a half-dozen interviews with the Southern California News Group, most season-ticket holders expressed unease with the upcoming renovations, their concerns largely resting with the rising costs of tickets and potential relocation from long-held seats.

Brad Cracchiola, a season-ticket holder who has attended games since he was a freshman at USC in 1988, has sat near the goal line on the south sideline for at least a decade. He purchases a pair of tickets to sit alongside three former fraternity brothers. Together, they hold eight seats alongside each other. Under the planned reseating, the section would for the first time be marked to the Trojan Club, the booster group requiring up to $1,000 per member in yearly dues and $100 per seat for a restoration gift.

Cracchiola estimated the group could pay twice as much as a result to retain their current seats.

They have held their seats together for almost three decades, even as Cracchiola at one point moved to Arizona and another one of them to New Mexico.

“We’re still losing our voices at games,” Cracchiola said. “We’re still screaming. We’re still making noise. We’re still cheering for the team. I don’t doubt the school can find wealthier people who can pay for the seats, but I’d like to see some loyalty.”

Cracchiola suggested USC could pursue one option that would involve a “grandfathering in of the people who have put in the time and shown their loyalty to our school.”

Others pointed out that the pricey fees came amid new restrictions.

Kenneth Chang, a season-ticket holder from Northern California, also belongs to the support group known as the Committee. Members pay annual dues of $10,000 before shelling out $3,000 per seat as part of the restoration gift. For the past decade, Chang has purchased a set of eight seats near midfield on the north sideline, but will be capped at six after the renovations.

“How do you take stuff away and charge the same?” Chang asked.

The cost of luxury

The drop in capacity comes primarily from the addition of a tower with luxury boxes on the south sideline, replacing approximately 9,000 midfield seats. Most season-ticket holders will be moved as a result, and their relocation will create some sort of ripple effect throughout the rest of the stadium. The seats in the stadium will also be replaced with wider ones and larger aisles. Bigger seats also mean fewer seats.

School officials have pointed out that the swath of luxury suites, though taking prime space, are funding a bulk of the renovations. The 24 prime “founder’s suites” run between $7.5 million and $10 million. In early May, USC said it had raised $225 million in cash and pledges for the project, all coming before an expected deal with United Airlines worth more than $70 million for naming rights to the Coliseum.

Early in the planning process, USC, which obtained management control in 2013, explored constructing a second tower on the north sideline to make way for more suites, according to Linda Dishman, the executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy. The preservationist group was brought in by the university for input on the redesign of the Coliseum, which remains a state and federal landmark. Ultimately the idea never materialized, largely since half of the original bowl shape, Dishman said, would have been altered.

The conservancy stressed the school retain three major elements of the Coliseum: the peristyle arches behind the east end zone, the exterior look of the stadium and the shape of the bowl.

With the exterior to be untouched, USC opted against building structures that could be placed atop the rim of the stadium because they would also extend outside the present walls.

“The exterior wall is what people see if they’re not going to the game,” Dishman said of its preservation, “so having a looming a structure over the bowl itself would alter the sense of the wall around the bowl.”

Such structures, though, presented options for retaining more of the previous capacity within the stadium.

Those factors added to the reduction in seats, causing some fans’ relocation.

A family divide?

Along with the rising costs of tickets, several season-ticket holders feared the reseating would split familiar sections.

Julianne Meisen, who first purchased season tickets as a freshman in 1985, has sat in Section 18 with her husband and 14-year-old son for the past 15 years and forged friendships with other nearby season-ticket holders.

“It’s like we built a history and a little football family we created inside the Coliseum,” Meisen said. “I know things have to change, and I know there’s always external pressure, it’s always about the money, but I always worry about the change.”

John Probst, a season-ticket holder from Redondo Beach and a member of the support group Cardinal and Gold, countered that he’s optimistic about the renovations amid some of the consternation.

The Coliseum is overdue for a facelift, he reasoned, and USC needs an updated stadium. The last major renovations to the facility occurred in 1994.

“I really want them to be in a world-class facility,” Probst said. “The Coliseum is not a world-class facility. It is a relic.”